The neck is one of the most difficult areas to work with as there is so many things that contribute to the onset of pain. Even your thoughts can affect the muscles and create a ton of trigger points and pain! When you consider it is a part of the complex shoulder region you can begin to see why so many people never find an answer to their problems. One of the biggest saboteurs is our instincts to constantly find ways to relieve the pain, instead of finding out WHY the pain is there in the first place. It makes perfect sense as to wanting to find a way to relieve the tension immediately by stretching the area that feels tight, however, when you understand how the neck is reacting to problems elsewhere, you can begin to see how our instincts are betraying us and setting our body up for much bigger problems. In this article, I will explain what the key causes of neck pain are and why stretching the tight neck muscles is not the solution to long term pain.

One of the most difficult areas of the body to work with is the thoracic region. It is such an important part of the body for providing the necessary mobility required for efficient movement with the upper body and the legs. It is also quite vulnerable to rigidity and stiffness from inactivity and poor movement strategies that can very quickly lead to a host of problems. Usually neck pain, shoulder pain, or lower back pain is the first result of any loss of thoracic mobility as these joints sacrifice their stability to make up for the loss of movement in the thoracic region. Having a series of exercises in your toolkit to restore your thoracic mobility is vital and in this article we show you our top 10.

Achilles tendinitis is a common injury for all athletes and fitness participants, especially those who run seriously as a sport or main fitness activity. It is often the result of overuse from repetitive actions seen in running and jumping sports and statistics show that it is one of the most common of all overuse injuries, accounting for 10% of all running injuries. This is a much different injury to an acute stress or accident-type injury such as an ankle ligament sprain from rolling an ankle or a collision injury often seen in sports like football. Like all overuse injuries, once it sets in it can be extremely difficult to get rid of so it is vital you prevent it from happening in the first place. Ignoring the warning signs is dangerous and can lead to full Achilles ruptures which is something that is seen a lot in professional sports like NBA basketball. I see a lot of similarities with this injury and ACL injuries in relation to the underlying cause. In order to prevent the problem you need to know what causes it. Unfortunately, it is not a simple answer to explain as the cause can differ from person to person and can be a multitude of factors you need to keep in mind. In this article I will explain the lessons I have learned from suffering and recovering from an Achilles injury myself years ago, along with research and my experience working with many complicated cases.